Our humanly ears are extremely astute at perceiving separate sound sources, especially in the horizontal plane. Unfortunately, the crude but common measurement methods which the bulk of audio humans rely, lacks the ability to discern between these two drastically different sounding situations. I.E. the sound a lestener hears when equidistant from two separated sond sources reproducing a the same signal vs those same two sound sources placed in close proximity to each other.

Our humanly ears are extremely astute at perceiving separate sound sources, especially in the horizontal plane. Unfortunately, the crude but common measurement methods which the bulk of audio humans rely, lacks the ability to discern between these two drastically different sounding situations. I.E. the sound a lestener hears when equidistant from two separated sond sources reproducing a the same signal vs those same two sound sources placed in close proximity to each other.

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There is little doubt that humans with two functioning ears would be able to perceive the difference between the two situations staed above, yet frequency response measurement's taken in the common and conventional means of using a mic placed in the acoustic space, would falsly indicate those distinct situations as technically nearly identical.

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There is little doubt that humans with two functioning ears would be able to perceive the difference between the two situations staed above, yet frequency response measurements taken in the common and conventional means of using a mic placed in the acoustic space, would falsly indicate those distinct situations as technically nearly identical.

This dramatic shortcoming of single mic measurement system to provide reliable information regarding how our ears will perceive the sound generated is readily apparent and has lead many sound system tuning humans astray into [[quagmires]] of over-equalization.

This dramatic shortcoming of single mic measurement system to provide reliable information regarding how our ears will perceive the sound generated is readily apparent and has lead many sound system tuning humans astray into [[quagmires]] of over-equalization.

Revision as of 23:48, 14 February 2008

Comb filtering is a phenomenon that results in a series of frequncy dependant peaks and cancellations caused by two or more sound sources in close proximity reproducing the same signal content, in the same frequency range reinforcing the same acoustic space.

Comb filtering that is caused by sources sufficiently distanced to be perceived as separate sources by our ears such that the sound created is not generally considered unpleasant or destructive from a listening standpoint is often referred to as "imaging."

Our humanly ears are extremely astute at perceiving separate sound sources, especially in the horizontal plane. Unfortunately, the crude but common measurement methods which the bulk of audio humans rely, lacks the ability to discern between these two drastically different sounding situations. I.E. the sound a lestener hears when equidistant from two separated sond sources reproducing a the same signal vs those same two sound sources placed in close proximity to each other.

There is little doubt that humans with two functioning ears would be able to perceive the difference between the two situations staed above, yet frequency response measurements taken in the common and conventional means of using a mic placed in the acoustic space, would falsly indicate those distinct situations as technically nearly identical.

This dramatic shortcoming of single mic measurement system to provide reliable information regarding how our ears will perceive the sound generated is readily apparent and has lead many sound system tuning humans astray into quagmires of over-equalization.